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On June 30, the Supreme Court released two much-awaited decisions, both involving arguments over the extent of federal power to coerce individuals. Those of us who believe that the federal government already far exceeds its constitutional (or merely proper) authority should applaud both decisions -- but not too enthusiastically.

I say that because both decisions were defensive victories. By narrow majorities, the Court fended off attacks on the lines holding against further erosion of the First Amendment. Be glad about that, but the forces pushing for ever-increasing political control won’t stop just because two of their offensives were repulsed.

I wrote here about Harris v. Quinn shortly after the Court heard oral arguments back in January and wondered whether the Court would find an excuse to turn a blind eye to the nasty skullduggery that was going on. In brief, the case was about the way public unions had importuned their political allies (specifically, two Illinois governors) to help them extract money from people working as home health care assistants by declaring them to be government employees.

If ever there was a perfect illustration of the way labor unions use political clout to obtain members and money that they could not get through voluntary means, this case is it. The plaintiffs in Harris just wanted to be left alone to handle life’s travails. They did not want any of their money seized for dues, much less by a union whose political objectives some of them vigorously opposed.

Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion, which reversed the Seventh Circuit’s rubber stamping of this act of gluttony. He argued that the justifications offered for dragooning the plaintiffs into an unwanted union and making them pay it money did not even come close to satisfying the Court’s requirements for a “compelling state interest.” For instance, counsel for Illinois had claimed that this coercive arrangement was necessary for “labor peace” but Justice Alito showed how ridiculous that argument is.

Much of the majority opinion dealt with the precedent that the Seventh Circuit relied upon, the Court’s 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. Justice Alito smote that decision as poorly reasoned, relying on misreadings of earlier cases involving disputes over compulsory unionism and free speech. Abood, he wrote, suffers from “questionable foundations.”

Among the cases he mentioned was Lathrop v. Donohue, a 1961 case involving mandatory bar association membership, where Justice Douglas wrote (in dissent) that the First Amendment does not permit compulsory bar membership, which would mean “sanction(ing) a device where men and women in almost any profession or calling can be at least partially regimented behind causes which they oppose.”

Justice Douglas, a true free speech liberal, did not think the government should be able to do that. His point applies with just as much force to the health care assistants in Harris.

Alito’s opinion came about as close to overruling Abood as possible. It is now like a tree chopped half-way through. In any event, the Court refused to extend that case, which only pertains to actual government employees, to cover individuals who are “partial-public employees, quasi-public employees, or simply private employees.” That should put a stop to back room deals where union officials and their political buddies gang up on hapless people to extract a little money from them.

The case was fought by attorneys at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, whose president, Mark Mix, said of the decision, “We applaud these homecare providers’ effort to convince the Supreme Court to strike down this constitutionally-dubious scheme, thus freeing thousands of homecare providers from unwanted union control.”

That is why Harris should have an impact. For a decade or so, this sort of arrangement has been a growing part of Big Labor’s revenue stream. (About a dozen other states have done the same as Illinois.) This tributary just dried up.

Hobby Lobby also fended off a big government offensive, in that case a federal mandate under Obamacare that if an employer provides health insurance, it has to include coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients. The owners of the chain of stores objected to that requirement on religious grounds. They argued that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Congress was obligated to respect religious convictions and avoid regulations that unnecessarily impinge upon religious beliefs.

Again by 5-4, the Court agreed with the plaintiffs, holding that the government had failed to show good reason why the mandate was necessary and therefore that they are entitled to an exception from it. (Full opinion available here.)

That is good. A contrary holding would have been a serious breach in the First Amendment. It would have further emboldened Obama’s authoritarians to swing the mandate club at Americans who don’t conform to their ideas about the scope of government power.

But – there is a troubling aspect to this. In America, the rightness and legality of government control has become the default position, from which people now must try to find refuge in some provision of the Bill of Rights. The owners of Hobby Lobby were like Dickens’ Oliver Twist, in effect begging, “Please sir, may I have an exception?”